The Other Side
by Mystikat
Summary: A girl with no last name meets a girl with no home. A Brittany and Santana history told in four parts. Includes Puck/Santana. Update 11/23/10: This fic is officially AU as of season two. In the process of writing part three. Yeah, that's right.
1. it's not that far

**The Other Side**

**chapter one (it's not that far)**

**1. **

Papa is yelling again. Santana rests her head on her bent knees and listens to his thundering voice and her mama's incoherent protests and pleas. She knows that tomorrow her mama will be cleaning up whatever mess he's made this time in his drunken rage. Santana prefers that to his broken sobs when he tips the line from angry drunk to unemployed, pathetic, useless drunk.

Who is she kidding? He's all of that, alcohol or no.

She hears a crash downstairs and reaches under her bed for her headphones and iPod, hidden within the space covered by a loose floorboard. It had taken her a full two years to ferret away enough money for these; she's not about to leave them in plain sight for her papa to pawn.

The headphones muffle the yelling, the music kills it, and she mouths along to the words and wishes that she could sing louder than in her head.

**2. **

She's only twelve. He's seventeen. They meet in a deserted park.

Twelve. Old enough, she thinks, as the bark on the tree scratches her back.

Twelve. She closes her eyes as the music inside her drowns out his harsh pants in her ear.

**3. **

When she is thirteen she decides that enough is enough and stands in front of her mother, tells him exactly what she thinks. That he is worthless, that three years of lazing on the couch while mama works two full time jobs is disgusting and what's so hard about getting a fucking job, anyway, that he means nothing, is nothing.

She tells him that they would be better off without him. Her mother slaps her and tells her to shut her mouth, that she shouldn't talk about things that she can't understand.

Santana stands there, head still turned to the side, and feels the slow burn across her cheek. She looks over her mother's shoulder at her dad, big tears rolling down his cheeks and mumbling about how sorry he is and how much he loves them and bullshit _bullshit_!

She leaves so she doesn't have to watch mama hold him and rock him and love him so much more than she can spare for her daughter.

This is the first night she spends with Puck, who doesn't ask questions and just fucks her into oblivion while his mother sings a lullaby to his sister in the next room.

She hums it on her way to school the next morning.

**4. **

By the time she is fourteen she is sleeping at Puck's house five days out of the week. His mother works swing shift and doesn't notice the extra lump in her son's bed, the long shadows disguising and tricking her tired eyes. They still have to be quiet even when his mom isn't there, though, because his sister always is.

So it is that when they fuck he covers her mouth with his hand or stuffs her underwear in her mouth ("so hot, baby") and sometimes she just bites his shoulder until he bruises and she traces her marks with smug satisfaction later.

There is a time once, when they are alone; his mother at work, like always, and his sister at a sleepover. Puck tells her he is going to make her scream, and he tries.

It is the one time he doesn't get her off at all.

He attempts to ignore her for the rest of the night, frustrated and confused, and turns the volume up on the stereo to blaring.

This is also the one time that the music isn't enough to stop her whirling thoughts; pulsing to the jarring beat of "what's wrong with me?"

Because something is.

She picks a fight with him. Years later, they won't remember about what, or how it ended with her telling him that he should be grateful that his dad is gone-and maybe that fucker had the right idea getting out of town. She looks Puck straight in the eye and asks him to tell her why his dad should have stuck around.

Puck breaks his hand that night, there is a new hole in the wall that he buys a poster to cover the next day, and she is told to _get the fuck out of my house _and _you don't know what the fuck you're talking about you stupid cunt_.

Maybe she doesn't know, maybe she should keep quiet, but she's tired of biting her tongue.

Isn't this what old enough feels like, yet? She thinks that this time it might be.

**5. **

The next day instead of going to Puck's, Santana goes to the park and ends up sitting against the tree that once rubbed her back raw. Her thighs are similarly bruised to that time, though, even if her back isn't, so she figures that this is the appropriate place to retreat to.

Anywhere but home would do, really. She feels her lip quiver, and oh god, she's lost him, she knows it. Their rhythm will never be the same because of her and that's just one more place that has no need for her.

She doesn't know where she'll sleep tonight and thinks it might come down to who she'll have to sleep _with _to have a roof for the night. She hates herself at this moment even more than her father, even more than her mama.

Out of the corner of her eye, she spies a flicker of purple and turns her head to the side and there _she_ is. A bright, blond-haired girl; slim and twirling on her toes. Santana is reminded of the scene in Sleeping Beauty, a girl dancing in the woods with nobody. Just with the sounds of nature around her.

But, she thinks, the only sounds here are the cars in the road hidden from view. The girl is dancing to nothing. Just a nobody dancing to nothing.

Santana wants to hurt her, to fuck her, to claim her.

Mostly, she just wants to dance with her.

At fourteen, Santana only understands wants, not needs.

She just isn't old enough.

* * *

**Author's Note: **While I'm positive that plenty of Santana and Brittany fans have already covered the territory of giving them back stories, I still want to try my hand at it. I'd like to say that any resemblance to another fanfic is purely coincidental, because everyone and their mother writes dysfunction/abusive family hi-jinks lately.

Next chapter will be Brittany's turn, and my ultimate plan is to finish this before September when Glee resumes and ruins my story by giving Santana a really loving awesome family. (It should be a total of four chapters.)

Also, while this story is San/Brit centered, I'm throwing a heavy dose of Puck in, because you can't just ignore that he had at least a little impact on Santana. Plus, I love his asshole ways.

**Current Soundtrack: **

Virginia Coalition's "Sing Along", which is the overall song for the whole story.

Emery's "Fractions" is the grove for this particular chapter.


	2. no secrets to reveal

**The Other Side**

**chapter two (no secrets to reveal)**

**1. **

They tell her that one day she'll know, that it comes with time; sometimes quick like Jazz that found it when she began putting sentences together and sometimes slow like one of her uncles, who allows her to sneak candy from his shirt pocket while he pretends to doze.

Names, her maybe-mother says, must bloom within you, and only you can pick it when the time comes.

She doesn't think there's a seed inside her anywhere waiting to bloom. She's positive that she would know if there was, like a tug on her bellybutton. She would feel the beckon, the slide of a faint whisper.

She eats a entire cup of seeds in her determination to find her name and ends up being sick all over her cousin and their shared bed. After that the girl decides that it's all too confusing and frustrating and she just wants to go back to playing hide and seek in the overgrown lot next to the commune's house.

"Marco!" she calls out one evening, lost in the grass, and spends the rest of the night waiting for an answer.

In the morning she wakes up covered in dew and eventually manages her way home.

She is eleven, but no one is really keeping track.

**2. **

They all live in one huge house on the outskirts of Lima; mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts, cousins. So many that it is hard to keep track of exactly who is who. It depends on the week who her mother might be, the ambiguous nature of relationships is meant to encourage unity and discard boundaries and labels. She has five father-uncles, seven mother-aunts, and ten brother- and sister-cousins. They grow their own food, make their own clothes (what they can't make they find elsewhere; you'd be amazed what people throw away), and pursue freedom that they just could not find in conventional society.

They call it Harmony. Lima calls it a cult. Neither are entirely accurate.

**3. **

At twelve she gets her first pair of shoes. There is a hole in the sole of one, and they are a little too big for her, but they might as well be new and perfect to her for all she has to compare them to.

One of her maybe-mothers tells her that she can go beyond the house and the yard and the lot with her shoes if she wants, that bare feet just aren't meant for pavement and every man and woman should see the world when they're ready. She wonders if being ready is like knowing your name, whether it is something you seek or wait for.

She ends up getting turned around, which is not surprising considering that she gets lost in her own yard at least twice a week. She's chasing a dandelion seed, blowing it with quiet puffs when it looks like it is beginning to settle and ends up in a tiny little park with only a swing-set and a rusting slide. She climbs up the slide the wrong way and seats herself at the top; maybe she could see home from here.

What she sees is a girl pressed up against a tree, and a boy pressed up against her. She knows what they're doing, but doesn't comprehend why. (Of course she knows about sex. There are no doors in her house.) The girl can't be more than three years older than her, for all her slightly flared hips and teacup breasts; her body not quite ready for a baby that she knows comes from this. Even from this distance she recognizes a furrowed, concentrated look on her face where joy should stretch.

She watches until it's done, or, rather, when he's done. He zips up, she tugs down her skirt and buttons up her shirt after readjusting her bra. She pulls her hair back up, and when she's done it's like he never occupied a part of her. He shoves his hands into his pockets and hunches his shoulders, unable to talk to a girl that he can easily have sex with.

The girl doesn't seem to care either way, though.

From the slide, she watches first the boy leave, and then the girl. She looks at the rust on her hands absently for a while, frowning, before resuming her search for home.

It doesn't matter that she found _her_ first, not this time.

**4. **

Her favorite father-uncle dies, and she knows she'll cry the most for him _ever ever ever _because she just cannot think of loving anyone more. It's a secret, though, because that's not fair to her other fathers. She wonders if he was taken because of that; like the toy that she wouldn't let her cousins play with. A mother broke it and said that the only thing that belongs to her is her, but it just taught her to hide what she loves.

She can't though. Because she had felt it, sitting in his lap and resting her head against his chest. The beats shallower and lighter until they weren't. Until he lost his heart.

They try to pry her away and she howls and lashes out; they stop and leave her after she bites a hand that ventured too close to her face. She has worried her parents who just don't know how this girl could be their soft, sweet, quiet darling. (In a house of fools, she is the wise man.)

Alone, she presses her lips to his cheek even as it grows cold and when the grief finally exhausts her, she wakes curled up to her cousin the next morning.

She turns thirteen waiting for him to come home. Halfway to fourteen she realizes that some names never catch up, lost in the wake of death. She feels the stirring of the race inside her and is truly afraid for the first time in her life.

If she sits too still for too long, she can feel it chasing her. So she keeps in constant motion and spins and runs and leaps and learns to dance to live.

**5. **

There is a pulse in her feet, nimble and light, and she raises her arms up to the sun. She feels the laughter in her belly and laughs, the pressure on her spine and arches. She doesn't know how beautiful she is.

(How beautiful she always is, really, but there are no mirrors in her house either.)

She opens her eyes and sees her and _sees her. _She feels the tug at her lips and smiles. There is no restraint in her; she is free in a way that her family will never know. The other girl is staring at her like she's never seen anything like her, but that's fair, because it's the same for her. So curious that she hardly notices that she has paused in her dance, she waits.

She can feel it coming.

_("Marco?" asks a lost girl._

"_Polo," says a lonely girl.)_

Really, all she's ever needed is an answer.

* * *

**Author's Note: **First, thank you to my reviewers, story alerters and favoriters. Without the subtle peer-pressure, I would not have gotten this chapter written in any kind of timely manner. Much less this quickly.

I'm hoping that this covers Brittany's extensive disconnect from reality which I'm choosing to view as a product of an unconventional upbringing. I like my characterization of her to lean more toward spacey and ditzy rather than unintelligent. Let's go with merely uneducated, guys.

Yeah, yeah, I know, cult-hippies in Lima. You have no idea how much this idea has been eating away at my brain, so forgive me this once. I promise to return to the Lima we're more familiar with next chapter and thank fuck that it's Santana's turn again, because Brittany is damn hard to write. I'll have to practice before I write the last chapter, I guess.

Next stop, high school, honey. And the return of Puck.

**Current Soundtrack:**

**Story: **Sing Along, Virginia Coalition

**First Chapter: **Fractions, Emery

**Second Chapter: **Nobody Knows Me At All, The Weepies **& **Fireflies, Owl City


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